
Unknowing
The Work of Modernist Fiction
Philip Weinstein(Author)
Cornell University Press
1st Edition
Published on 31. May 2018
320 pages
978-1-5017-1174-9 (ISBN)
System requirements
for PDF without DRM
E-Book Single Licence
You are acquiring a single user licence for this eBook, which you might not transfer. [L]
Available for download
Description
Alles über E-Books | Antworten auf Fragen rund um E-Books, Kopierschutz und Dateiformate finden Sie in unserem Info- & Hilfebereich.
Philip Weinstein explores the modernist commitment to "unknowing" by addressing the work of three supreme experimental writers: Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner. In their novels, the narrative props that support the drama of coming to know are refused. When space turns uncanny rather than lawful, when time ceases to be linear and progressive, objects and others become unfamiliar. So does the subject seeking to know them. Weinstein argues that modernist texts work, by way of surprise and arrest, to subvert the familiarity and narrative progression intrinsic to realist fiction. Rather than staging the drama of coming to know, they stage the drama of coming to unknow. The signature move of modernism is shock, just as resolution is the trademark of realism.Kafka, Proust, and Faulkner wrought their most compelling experimental effects by undermining an earlier Enlightenment project of knowing. Weinstein draws on major Enlightenment thinkers to identify constituent components of the narrative of "coming to know"-the progressive narrative underwriting two centuries of Western realist fiction. The book proceeds by framing modernist unknowing between prior practices of realist knowing, on the one hand, and, on the other, certain later practices-postmodern and postcolonial-that move beyond knowing altogether. In so doing, Weinstein proposes a metahistory of the Western novel, from Daniel Defoe to Toni Morrison.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
NY
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
Digital original
ISBN-13
978-1-5017-1174-9 (9781501711749)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Person
WeinsteinPhilip M.:
Philip Weinstein is Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English at Swarthmore College. He is the author of What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison; Faulkner's Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns; and The Semantics of Desire: Changing Models of Identity from Dickens to Joyce.
Philip Weinstein is Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor of English at Swarthmore College. He is the author of What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison; Faulkner's Subject: A Cosmos No One Owns; and The Semantics of Desire: Changing Models of Identity from Dickens to Joyce.
Content
- Cover
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. Leaping: Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling
- Part One. Knowing: "Sapere Aude!"-The West Dares to Know
- 2. Genealogy of Realism: An Enlightenment Narrative in Five Stages
- 3. Anatomy of Realism: Coming to Know, from Defoe to Dostoevsky
- Part Two. Unknowing: The Work of Modernist Fiction
- 4. Plotting Modernism: Freud
- 5. Uncanny Space: Flaubert to Beckett
- 6. Unbound Time: Proust, Kafka, Faulkner
- 7. Subject and/as Other: Kafka, Proust, Faulkner
- Part Three. Beyond Knowing: Postmodern and Postcolonial Flights from Gravity
- 8. Adventures in Hyperspace
- 9. Urban Nightmare and City Dreams: Rilke and Calvino
- 10. Passage and Passing: Forster and Rushdie
- 11. Arrest and Release: Faulkner, García Márquez, Morrison
- Conclusion: Acknowledging-Modernism's Weak Messianic Power
- Notes
- Index
- A
- B
- C
- D
- E
- F
- G
- H
- I
- J
- K
- L
- M
- N
- O
- P
- Q
- R
- S
- T
- U
- V
- W
- Y
- Z
System requirements
File format: PDF
Copy protection: without DRM (Digital Rights Management)
System requirements:
- Computer (Windows; MacOS X; Linux): Use the free software Adobe Reader, Adobe Digital Editions, or any other PDF viewer of your choice (see eBook Help).
- Tablet/Smartphone (Android; iOS): Install the free app Adobe Digital Editions or another reading app for eBooks, e.g., PocketBook (see eBook Help).
- E-reader: Bookeen, Kobo, Pocketbook, Sony, Tolino and many more (only limited: Kindle).
The file format PDF always displays a book page identically on any hardware. This makes PDF suitable for complex layouts such as those used in textbooks and reference books (images, tables, columns, footnotes). Unfortunately, on the small screens of e-readers or smartphones, PDFs are rather annoying, requiring too much scrolling.
This eBook does not use copy protection or Digital Rights Management.
For more information, see our eBook Help page.

